Who am I to contradict Teresa of Avila? Back in the 16th century she wrote that “comparison is the death of the spiritual life.” Fast forward 500 years. When I find myself making comparisons with those who have more money or accolades, I acknowledge that my interior world becomes altered. And not in a good way. So she had a point.
Except when it came to narrative ethics.
I’ve been thinking a lot about ethics this summer because of both a course I’m teaching and a novel I’m reading: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. For me both the course and the novel are dominated by two notions — story telling and story taking. (I’ve written about these ideas in an earlier Good Enough if you want to do a little digging).
With both narrative telling and taking comparison is inevitable. There is a link made between the one telling the story and the meaning making that occurs for the listener. Even if their lives look nothing alike. In fact, the stories where comparisons are harder to make, where links feel impossibly loose, those are the narratives that drive personal, even spiritual growth.
In Bad Cree the protagonist Mackenzie has dreams that affect her deeply. She wears her memories-turned-dreams-turned-nightmares like a wet shirt that she can’t peel off. I haven’t lived Mackenzie’s griefs or losses but I know something of the fear of nightmares come to life.
In that knowing a narrative link between us is made. A small comparison.
Faith L. Lagay, PhD writes, “The ethics work of narrative can only be done if we ‘tack back and forth’ between stories that make sense of our lives and stories that challenge those existing stories [causing] us to “exchange overly simple views of the world for more nuanced and complex ones” [Arthur Frank, Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology, p. 6]. Essentially, we need new stories that don’t fit with what we think we know. Those new stories “make trouble” for us as they don’t “fit” with our existing narratives but “for some reason cannot be ignored.”
Lagay goes on to write that “Closed philosophical and belief systems that dictate ‘right action’ could possibly foreclose opportunities for comparative critiquing of ‘trouble-making’ narratives and, hence, for moral growth.”
I am all about growth opportunities and I am totally here for some good trouble. So bring on comparison if it allows me to trouble an insular life that needs expanding! We have to work to find each other in stories, be they shared over coffee or through a book or spraypainted on a wall. Nuance will be required. But in that narrative ethical exchange I see possibility —
for something more than death.
Powerful...I’ve been crafting my life’s narrative to try to find meaning in some of the big issues. Thank you for introducing me to Dr. Lagay and Arthur Frank. And thank you for helping to show a thread of “good trouble” in the process.